AP 0819: What Blog Post Types Should I Launch My New Blog With?

By Pat Flynn on March 10, 2017

AskPat 819 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 819 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I’m here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Jeff, but before we get to that I do want to thank today’s sponsor which is Design Crowd.

It’s a website that helps businesses crowd source custom graphics from over a half million designers worldwide. It doesn’t matter what you’re designing, a logo, website, business card or whatever. You can get a perfect custom design every time or your money back. If you go to DesignCrowd.com/AskPat, you can learn more and download your free guide to outsourcing great logos, graphics and websites for your business, and you get $100 off your next design when you enter the promo code, Ask Pat. Again, that’s DesignCrowd.com/AskPat, promo code, Ask Pat.

Here’s today’s question from Jeff.

Jeff Campbell: Hi, Pat. Quick question for you. This is Jeff Campbell from NewMiddleClassDad.com. I just launched my blog inspired by listening to your podcasts. I’ve got a few different categories on my menu bar. I know from listening to your interview with Neil Patel to start with one epic post and then add more two or three times a week as it goes on. I have one main post, and rather than have nothing under the dropdown menus for the different categories, I have the same epic post underneath each one. I wondered what you thought about that strategy. Obviously, as I add more posts I will remove that duplicate from each dropdown. Love your show, both of your podcasts. Love your blog. Thank you so much for everything you do.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jeff. Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. This answer is coming several months after your question was posed. It looks like you have launched, and I’m on your website now. It looks like you’re doing a great job of continually creating content, and categorizing them and what not. This question may be irrelevant to you that this point, but I think it still may be relevant to a lot of people. When you’re launching, launching with one epic blog post is a great idea. I’ve done this before on FoodTrucker.com, actually, that epic blog post which was called 50 Food Truckers Speak Out: What’s One Thing I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Food Truck Business?

We collected and collated answers from 50 different food truck owners and posted them there. It was an amazing post. It’s gotten over 2,500 comments. It’s been shared and went viral for a while which was awesome. We also launched with a couple auxiliary or secondary pieces of content in other categories. That’s what I actually would recommend, one epic blog post in your main category that is super over the top value. That’s the one that you promote. You can even throw advertising dollars at it, if you wanted to, not necessary. If you build enough buzz and hype, and you even start to build the email list beforehand, or you reach out to your network to share one thing, that one thing is going to be that epic blog post.

What’s nice about having these secondary pieces of content on the site is it rounds out your site in these other categories that you want to have, which is good to have because you want to show what else you could talk about. You don’t want your navigation menu to be bare naked at that point. It fills out your blog, it makes it look like it’s somewhere they should continue to stick around on. It looks like there’s stuff there to look at and yes, that’s the case. When they read that epic blog post because that’s how they initially find your stuff, they’re going to see that there’s other pieces of content to read. One of those three may be one that would be more likely to get somebody to subscribe or to share. Even if they don’t resonate with that epic one, they might stumble upon and read your second one. Maybe they might say the second one is good too, I’m going to subscribe to this person and share the stuff and subscribe to their email list and what not.

Having content like that is great when you launch anything brand new, so on a podcast launching with multiple episodes, with a blog, same thing. With a video, I launch with two or three so people can dive into your stuff even more. It gives them more opportunities to share and love your stuff. It really activates them to want to learn more from you, so that’s what I would recommend. Now on your site now, NewMiddleClassDad.com, it looks like you got a lot of great content. You got some interaction with an audience there, some new categories, it looks like, some other epic posts. That looks great. Keep up the good work. I think you’re on the right path. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Jeff, we wanted to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, for sure. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you’d like potentially featured here on the show as well, head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page. Thanks so much.

I appreciate you, and here’s a quote to finish off the day and the week by Stephen Leacock. He said, “I’m a great believer in luck. I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.” I love that. It reminds me of a Jefferson quote that I live by which is, “The harder you work, the luckier you become,” which is absolutely true. Guys, thanks so much. I appreciate you, appreciate all the support. I look forward to serving you next week in the next batch of AskPat episodes. Cheers.

Let's figure out what works!

Join 150,000+ active members in the SPI community

Show Notes

Today’s question comes from Jeff, who has a question about creating one large blog post to launch his new blog. Should he create one epic blog post to launch his new blog? What other content should he create to launch his blog? As his blog grows, how does he balance the larger blog posts and the smaller posts? Jeff’s website is at NewMiddleClassDad.com.